ESPN has opened a new state-of-the-art, 194,000-square-foot building called Digital Center-2 with five studios, boosting the number of studios on its campus in Bristol, Connecticut, to 14. The nearly 10,000-square-foot new SportsCenter studio alone is bigger than many people's homes.

ESPN insists that DC-2's infrastructure is future-proof.

"I've heard that it's built for technology that hasn't even been introduced yet," SportsCenter host Steve Levy said, "which is hard to believe, but we have a lot of smart people working here so I'll take their word for it."

That may turn out to be true, but can ESPN regulate the temperature to satisfy both Levy and Stuart Scott, his co-anchor on the 11 p.m. SportsCenter?

Scott has bravely battled appendiceal cancer since 2007, and he admits he's easily chilled. So he wears long johns and three layers of clothing. He likes the heat turned up. Levy, his SportsCenter partner, tends to perspire. He prefers the temperature turned down.

Maybe the excitement of working in such an impressive new studio will take both of their minds off the room temperature. The new studio will have 115 monitors, 100 more than the old studio, which debuted a decade ago. An entire wall is composed of 56 monitors. A 16-by-10-foot corner wall of more monitors rests on rails so it can move toward the anchor desk.

"I can't get over how lucky I am to get to work at ESPN," Levy told a recent media gathering at ESPN.

"It's kind of like stealing money," Scott said. "There are a lot of things we can do for a living and nothing compares to this."

Levy, 49, and Scott, 48, both graduated from college in 1987 and joined ESPN in 1993.

"As you can see said," Levy said, "after 21 years, we're both starting to look alike as well. We both have black hair."

Levy, of course, was joking. They don't look anything like each other. Levy is white and Scott is black.

Levy said he's often asked what else he'd like to do after hosting SportsCenter for so long. His answer is that he'd sign on for another 20 years of hosting SportsCenter if he could.

"We anchor the 11 o'clock SportsCenter," Levy said. "When the big game is on, we come out of the big game."

"It's what built the network, and it is still what drives the network," Scott said of SportsCenter.

So how will the new SportsCenter studio enrich the experience of the viewer?

"My real answer is I'm not totally sure," Scott admitted, "but after rehearsing in there several times, the enrichment in our experience is astronomical, and I'm not just saying that. I've never seen anything like it."

Levy pointed out that instead of a blank scene, a SportsCenter or team logo in the background, graphics and information will support what the anchors say.

"It's got a wow factor," Levy said.

The new studio will allow SportsCenter to expand to 18 live hours a day.

When Levy started at ESPN on Aug. 1, 1993, he worked the 2:30 a.m. SportsCenter, which lasted only half an hour, but every effort was made to squeeze in every score and highlight. Now the 11 p.m. SportsCenter runs much longer.

"We laugh at two hours now," Levy said.

These days, SportsCenter reports on breaking stories, covers playoff postgame press conferences live even if ESPN hadn't televised the games, and offers longer features instead of squeezing in every highlight.

Scott, who is known for such catch phrases as "Boo Yah," said he learned to be himself by watching ESPN trailblazer Chris Berman.

"I heard," Scott said, "one of our colleagues say, 'We all kind of owe Berman 10 percent of our paycheck.' He was the one who broke the ground by having a very unique, distinct personality."

Berman's personality wasn't forced, though. He has always been himself on the air, and so has Scott. Levy admitted that wasn't always true about him. For his first six months at ESPN, he tried to copy the style of Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann.

"I wasn't sure me being me was exactly going to work," Levy said. "Then I figured out I can't do what Dan and Keith do separately or combined."

ESPN president John Skipper said he wants to showcase more of the personality of the SportsCenter anchors. Skipper also said that opening DC-2 has nothing to do with the debut last August of Fox Sports 1, a rival 24-hour sports network. Skipper said DC-2 had been planned for more than five years.

Levy said wearing makeup is his least favorite part of his job, even more so than getting home at 3 a.m. after his show five nights a week. His day begins with a 5 p.m. meeting and he thrives off the energy of the newsroom with hundreds of monitors showing games across the world and ESPN employees cheering for their favorite teams.

"It's like a sports bar without alcohol," Levy said.

Contact Bill Doyle at wdoyle@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillDoyle15..

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